NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

City Brain FAQ

Malaysia City Brain is a programme that offers a comprehensive suite of acquisition, integration, and analysis of big and heterogeneous data generated by a diversity of sources in urban spaces through video and image recognition, data mining and machine learning technology. With this, city council and urban planners will be able to make better decisions for the community.

The Malaysia City Brain is a data-driven, artificial intelligence smart traffic platform adapted from Hangzhou City Brain and evolved to meet local needs.

It leverages on artificial intelligence to address urban challenges and offers intelligent solutions to the community in Kuala Lumpur. The platform uses Alibaba Cloud's AI program as well as big data analytics capabilities to produce real-time traffic predictions using its video and image recognition technologies.

The Malaysia City Brain operates as an open platform whereby it can plug in new and existing solutions from other platform by leveraging off pre-built intelligent tools, incorporating artificial intelligence and Machine Learning, and utilizing existing data sets as well as additional data sets from external sources.

The Malaysia City Brain will offer a comprehensive suite of acquisition, integration, and analysis of big and heterogeneous data generated by a diversity of sources in urban spaces through video and image recognition, data mining and machine learning technology.

With this, city council and urban planners will be able to make better decisions for the community.

In the first phase of the program, the capital Kuala Lumpur will roll out the Malaysia City Brain for to help facilitate and streamline traffic management in the city.

The Malaysia City Brain will be able to address the challenges of modern urban living in Kuala Lumpur. A recent study shows that KL's population of 1.8 million is spending 250 million hours on the road. To add to the scenario, we also have had 26.7 million tourists visiting Malaysia in 2016 alone. This all equates to major challenge - that of having to deal with addressing traffic congestion and achieving better road safety.

With its massive cloud computing and data processing capabilities, the City Brain can optimise the flow of vehicles and traffic signals by calculating the time to reach intersections. It will also be able to generate structured summaries of data, such as traffic volume and speed in particular lanes, which can be used to facilitate other tasks including signal optimisation and incident detection.

A three-fold outcome is expected from the program, which includes analysis of traffic conditions, optimisation of traffic signals and detection of accidents or traffic incidents. Malaysia City Brain will begin with a base of 382 cameras feeds and input from 281 traffic light junctions, concentrated within central Kuala Lumpur.

For a start, the Malaysia City Brain seeks to improve traffic and deal with congestion in Kuala Lumpur.

The platform is expected to expand its offering solutions in the areas of:

Safety, security & surveillance

Environment monitoring

Healthcare

Energy

Waste & cleaning management

Public infrastructure

Ultimately, we hope that Malaysia City Brain will not only attract and nurture world-class AI talent, but will also pave the way for co-creation among other ASEAN nations. Malaysia City Brain is an open platform, which will give businesses, startups, entrepreneurs, educational and research institutions the opportunity to access and leverage on the AI tools, and ultimately drive advance innovations.

The Malaysia City Brain starts with a base of 300 traffic cameras operated by DBKL’s Transportation Management Department covering the Kuala Lumpur’s Critical Business District (CBD). DBKL has invested heavily in setting up a good infrastructure, to include sensors and cameras, all connected to a central command centre via live feeds, with manual monitoring.

The first opportunity from this is to have live feeds to be captured into a data lake, integrated, and then to apply AI to automate monitoring and alert triggers. As Malaysia City Brain develops, more benefits from AI will contribute to the betterment of the rakyat.

Phase one of Malaysia Intelligence City Platform will cover 66.4 Km with 281 Intersections including areas such as Jalan Tun Razak, Jalan Sultan Ismail and KL Business Centre. It will also include surface streets, interstate highways, public transportation, and emergency vehicle response.

As the lead agency in digital economy, MDEC is leading the data analytics and project management for Malaysia City Brain.

MDEC will also facilitate a Call-for-Collaboration in selecting a private sector partners to operate the Malaysia City Brain post pilot stage.

MDEC will continuously facilitate the funnelling of relevant data sets from both the public and private sector into the platform

MDEC will also develop talents in AI, and Malaysia City Brain is a good platform to start. They can use the data that will be generated from Malaysia City Brain

Malaysia embarked on a proof of concept for Malaysia City Brain, in partnership with ASEAN Data Analytics Exchange (ADAX). The partnership gave four high-calibre Malaysian students from ADAX's Data Star program the opportunity to experience the implementation of the Malaysia City Brain.

In the second phase, we aim to expanded the coverage reach to include the rest of KL - inbound and outbound highways.

Other than traffic related solutions, the platform could also be expanded to other areas such as safety, security & surveillance, Environment monitoring, Healthcare, Energy, Waste & cleaning management and Public infrastructure

The key players involved in Malaysia City Brain are Alibaba Cloud and DBKL.

Our key strategic partners involved are Alibaba Cloud as the platform provider and subject matter expert; Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur (DBKL), providing access to camera live feeds, traffic light information as well as information on any events and road work.

We also have other partners such as Sena Traffic on traffic light data; Waze and Grab as traffic and mobility data providers; and MapIT for its GIS dataset.

But, I stress on the fact that Malaysia City Brain is an open platform. This gives businesses, startups, entrepreneurs, educational and research institutions the opportunity to access and leverage on the AI tools, and ultimately drive advance innovations.

Our focus for the initial phase is to deploy Malaysia City Brain in KL. MDEC would like to have the expansion of the platform to the other states in Malaysia in the future phase if we manage to secure interest and commitment from the respective local authorities

The Tianchi Big Data Ecosystem is a platform that offers many education tools, such as online courses, online hands-on labs, live broadcasts, competitions, user profiling, as well as certification.

It forms an ecosystem that supports the education department, universities, and startups in terms of serving as a guide on big data education, educate & train data scientists, and boost the nation's big data industry.

The Malaysia Tianchi Big Data Programme will be integrated into Alibaba Cloud's Tianchi global community, which already boasts over 120,000 developers and 2,700 academic institutes and businesses from 77 countries and regions. By participating in these big data competitions, Malaysian experts will compete with, and learn from, counterparts across the globe to develop best-in-class data technology, keeping Malaysia at the forefront of the global digital economy.

The Malaysia City Brain is a data-driven, artificial intelligence smart traffic platform adapted from Hangzhou City Brain and evolved to meet local needs.

Alibaba Cloud has successfully implemented a data-driven & AI smart traffic solution at Hangzhou named Hangzhou City Brain. Leveraging on the success of its implementation, MDEC has selected Alibaba Cloud as a strategic partner to develop such a platform & tweak it to meet local needs.

This should not be about the partner, instead, it should be on the technology. The Malaysia City Brain is a data-driven, artificial intelligence smart traffic platform adapted from Hangzhou City Brain and evolved to meet local needs.

While we may be using the technology developed by Alibaba Cloud, Malaysia City Brain is an open platform that will allow any local business, entrepreneurs and start-ups to participate, and reap the benefits

Started off as a proof of concept project done locally in August 2017, MDEC has collaborated with ASEAN Data Analytics Exchange (ADAX) in providing project management and data analytics, while Alibaba Cloud provided the platform and subject matter expertise in the initial phase of MALAYSIA CITY BRAIN.

The collaboration with ADAX has also opened the opportunity for four high-caliber Malaysian students from ADAX's Data Star program to experience the implementation of Malaysia City Brain. These graduates were paired with data science mentors to participate in the project with substantive hands-on experience. We remain strongly committed to developing a robust Big Data Analytics (BDA) ecosystem and nurturing the growth of data professionals in Malaysia.

MDEC is driving Malaysia's transition towards a developed digital economy through Digital Malaysia. Digital Malaysia is a vision of a fully developed sustainable digital economy built upon a vibrant domestic digital technology industry and the transformative use of digital solutions by government, businesses and citizens, as well as a robust enabling ecosystem.

Among our current high impact initiatives are promoting and facilitating digital government transformation focusing on citizen-centric online service delivery, improving the quality of daily life via digital means, and enhancing digital skills of the youth for future employability and income generation.

In Malaysia, many Malaysian organisations have already made much headway into AI, especially in the areas of service robots, public safety & security, and infrastructure.

Machine learning is the bedrock for most current AI use cases. It is based on algorithms that learn by recognising patterns in big data sets without requiring rules-based programming in order to direct actions or draw conclusions. In practical terms, machine learning can be used to project outcomes, such as consumer demand or public health needs. It can optimise equipment maintenance, fine-tune prices, tailor marketing messages, and provide personalised retail experiences.

With MDEC as the lead agency in driving #mydigitalmaker and partnering with the Ministry of Education (MoE), universities, technical institutes and the private sector, we saw the introduction of computational thinking in all subjects taught in Standard 1 (Year 1) while Computer Science (CS) was offered as an elective in Form 1 and Form 4 in 2017

The MoE has taken steps to further deepen the link between digital skills and the curriculum after seeing the value of the approach. In line with the Malaysian Education Blueprint, coding will be officially included in the national school syllabus starting 2018.

2018 will see a deepening of the roll-out with computational thinking embedded into the teaching curriculum of Standard 2 (Year 2), Form 2 and Form 5 (Year 7 and 11) with 2019 seeing roll-out to Standard 3 (Year 3) and Form 3 (Year 9) by which time the entire primary and secondary school national curriculum will have been infused with a strong element of digital teaching and learning. It should be noted that the secondary school system already offers Design Technology as an elective subject

With STEM as a priority in our education blueprint and the recent incorporation of computational thinking in the curriculum, our younger generation is on the way to having a strong foundation to be digital citizens and future innovators in a rapidly evolving world

Malaysia is preparing itself for the next technological revolution - Artificial Intelligence. A natural evolution from Big Data Analytics, AI solutions before this were restricted to within the academia domain and selected niche areas. But recently, AI solutions have matured and are now market-ready.

Malaysia seeks to increase adoption and application of AI technologies. Through MDEC, Malaysia will develop a national AI framework which is the extension of the Big Data Analytics national framework (excluding fundamental AI research areas such as voice recognition, natural language processing, computer vision, robotics & motion and planning & optimisation).

During the 29th Malaysia Implementation Meeting in October 2017, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced that Malaysia would develop its own National AI Framework, as it is recognized as a game changer for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and a step towards embracing digital transformation.

MDEC is making progress in developing the framework and is engaging relevant stakeholders to collect, validate and design the framework, identify priority sectors and initiatives.

New avenues of industry areas are being developed under Malaysia's Digital Economy plan - focusing on Big Data Analytics (BDA), eCommerce and the Internet of Things (IoT), offering massive growth potential. It is this combination of the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data - and AI - that will deliver the most powerful benefits to Digital Malaysia.

AI, which is soon expected to match human intelligence, is a natural progression from big data analytics driven by more data, smarter algorithms, and machine learning. What will emerge is an increasingly hyperconnected world where there are endless possibilities.

Many Malaysian organisations have already made much headway into AI, especially in the areas of service robots, public safety & security, and infrastructure.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been identified as a game changer for many industries. AI has come into the foreground of everyone's collective consciousness and will soon be a vital component across various fields such as medicine, finance, retail, news and marketing.

Malaysia's collaboration with Alibaba is a symbiotic partnership. We share the same vision in encouraging digital inclusivity

Malaysia City Brain is an open platform. It will be made available to other partners - public and private sectors alike - where they will be able to to access and leverage on the AI tools, and ultimately drive advance innovations.

In fact, MDEC is currently carrying out 'Call for Collaboration' (CFC) to identify private sector partners to operate the Malaysia City Brain.

Besides operating the platform, the future partner will also be developing additional tools and services while enriching the platform with more data sets from other sources

Expertise that the proposed partner must have encompasses areas such as IoT, BDA, AI, Cloud Computing, Payment services and Cyber Security